Some days I felt and urgent responsibility to each change of light outside the sunporch windows. Who would remember any of it, any of this our time, and the wind thrashing in the buckeye limbs outside? Somebody had to do it, somebody had to hang onto the days with teeth and fists, or the whole show had been in vain. That it was impossible never entered my reckoning, For work, for a task, I had never heard that word. -Annie Dillard

05 May 2006

Salvation through writing

Novels are all populated by people you've actually met. Your own novels by the people you've loved or hated, laughed with our shouted at, cried on or because of, seen on street corners or out of the corner of your eye, at checkouts and stoplights, passing you walking or running, people who have made your heart burst or collapse, who you have judged or have judged you, who have contributed to your birth and your life and your death.

All your life is soil and the seeds from the discarded fruit, the dead plant, the shriveled pod, germinate in the refuse--the dung--and your art--your life--is composed of all that has died in you or around you, yet rises up cleaner and stronger and more fragrant because of the death, out from the death. Every piece of you has a purpose, even if that purpose is simply in the discipline of sacrifice. And in the work of the novelist who captures true life, whose characters you recognize, the recognition comes because they have truly lived and you understand because so have you.

This is the consolation of the existentialist: any experience can be hammered into art.

This is the consolation of the redeemed: every facet of existence can be transformed into praise.

This is your sacred role: reappropriation. Truth is a scalpel and sometimes it cuts away more of you than it gives, but the cycle of loss yields to a new understanding that will release your altered perspective into a new vision. Everything that has happened to you belongs to you, even in its death, as raw material.